The National Geographic Magazine
&
"Corpse-carting" Across the Mojave Desert!
Spelling each other-one spouse lying on padded boards on the passenger side of the car while the other
drove a turn of 100 miles-the Andersons crossed the blazing desert in the cool of a September night. Pass
ers-by were sometimes amused, sometimes electrified, at sight of the "corpse."
The improvisation carried the
travelers restfully over a single driving stretch of more than 600 miles between San Diego and Bryce Canyon.
Adjectives are wasted on Mount Rainier;
it towers above them all.*
Among our neighbors at Yakima Park
Campground, perched on a shoulder of the
mountain, was a tentful of Japanese-Ameri
cans. They had come up in a family truck
from their fruit ranch in the astoundingly
irrigated Yakima Valley.
The Nisei young men were just out of
service. They loved cameras; hour after hour
they coaxed a cute little ground squirrel to
spots where they could bend over it with a
big Speed Graphic. Every time they entered
their tent, they observed the Japanese custom
of removing shoes. We liked our new neigh
bors.
Brave wild flowers grew cheerily on Mount
Rainier's chilly flanks, turning large meadows
into flames of color. Ranger talks had sharp
ened my amateur eyes, and now I could rec
ognize alpine species of columbine, Indian
paintbrush, lupine, phlox, asters, and heather.
One day we followed the Burroughs Trail
up to Frozen Lake and then crept farther
upward over snowfields on which people were
skiing, in August.
The End of "Westward Ho"
At the top of the trail we looked far down,
and farther up, on the largest glacier in the
United States. Emmons Glacier is just one
of Mount Rainier's 16 rivers of ice. Climbing
above even its lowest extremity made us feel
we were getting toward heaven.
From Mount Rainier we headed for Port
land.t
Driving this route, we felt the Pacific come
closer and closer; on our car radio the coastal
* See "Washington, the Evergreen State," by Leo A.
Borah, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, February,
1933.
t See "Oregon Finds New Riches," by Leo A. Borah,
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, December, 1946.
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